Indian Army – The King of Good times ?

Given below is a news report from the August 2005 issue of Alive Magazine.

Indian Army – The King of Good Times ?

The defence authorities,concerned with the impact that the easilyavailable and low-priced alcohol was having on the troops ,have now decided to cut the monthly quota of canteen liquorfor officers and other ranks.

According to the new quota,the entitlement for jawans is 6 bottlesa months while for officers it is 12 to 16 bottles , according to theirranks.The quota for retired armed forces personnel , too has beenreduced .Retired jawans now get 4 bottles and officers,from 10 to 14 bottles.

Liquor is supplied free to officers and jawans in the field areas ofinclement weather to help them withstand cold, boredom, lonelinessand isolation.Servicemen elsewhere get liquor at a low cost,as a concession to their difficult service condtitions.The availability of cheap liquor from the army canteens turns a goodnumber of them into habitual drinkers, adversely affecting their healthand family life. If often becomes a source of corruption too , becausethe liquor could be sold to civilians for double the price.

No officer would be consuming half a bottle of rum or whisky daily,yet most of them draw their full quota from the canteen. Large-scalediversion of canteen liquor to the civil market is reported and instancesof court martial of the responsible officers are not uncommon.

There is need to control the huge quantity of alcohol suppliedto the armed forces.The liquor cartels encourage it because theymake huge profits from the sales.The low price of canteen liquoris maintained at the Government’s expense ,becauseof exemption of excise and sales tax.

A karnataka based ex-servicemen’s organisation VeKare , has beencarrying on a campaign on the ill-effects of excessive alcoholconsumption in the armed forces.As far as retired officers andjawans are concerned ,there is no justification in supplying themliquor at a low price fro mthe army canteens.Itonly helps them to become drunkards and make them spend aconsiderable portion of their pension on liquor when their incomeis substantially reduced after retirement.

Besides many of them indulge in the corruptpractice of selling their entitlement at a profit to outsiders.Therefore, apart from drastically reducing the quota forservicemen,the Government should stop sale of low-cost liquorto ex-servicemen from army canteens.

DHENKANAL, July 7: The intrusion of three Army jawans into Dhenkanal Working Women’s hostel made inmates very anxious last night. The inmatescould not sleep and still fear staying inside the hostel despite thelack of adequate security.According to hostel sources, three jawans intruded into the hostel by jumping over the main gate on Thursday evening.They knocked on a door and one of them tried to break the door.

One of the frightened inmates rang up the town police station and sought help to apprehend the sepoys. Two jawans managed to escape, another rushed towards Gudinali and was caught by the police with the active cooperation of locals.The jawan who was arrested was in an intoxicated condition.

BEGUSARAI: A passenger on the Guwahati-New Delhi North East Express was allegedly stripped and tortured by a group of drunk jawans who have been arrested, Railway Protection Force sources said on Wednesday.

Parmatma Yadav of Balia, Uttar Pradesh, was stripped and forced to run naked in an aisle of the train on Tuesday night, RPF Assistant Commissioner Mahtab Khan and Barauni RPF officer-in-charge O A Khan said

SURAT: Patel was an employee with an MNC in Vapi and was not keeping well for quite sometime.

He had called his uncle Bhagwandin from Rewa and had asked him to take him back to his hometown. On Tuesday evening, Patel, accompanied by his uncle,mistakenly boarded a Mumbai-bound train at Vapi railway station instead of boarding a Surat train.

Realising this, the duo got down at Dahanu railway station. At Dahanuplatform Patel felt fatigued and fainted on the spot. While his uncle was busy helping Patel get up, a few plain clothed railwaypolicemen suspected the duo to be drunk.

One of the policemen badly beat Patel up only to realise later thathe was sick. The policemen threatened Patel and his uncle of direconsequences if they approached the police in Surat.

Bhagwandin took Patel to the GRP railway policestation at Surat and lodged a complaint against the policemen at around 3:30 am on Wednesday morning. The police took him to the Civil hospital for first aid, where he succumbed.

Maoists impose liquor ban in agencyA group of naxal activists destroyed a liquor shop at Rintada recently and later went to Chintapalle to attack another shop. Maoists back strike against Liquor.The State committee of the CPI-ML(Maoist) on Tuesday called upon the activists of Anti-Liquor Forum and democratic forces to educate people on waging a struggle against the Government’s excise policy.

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